Algeria: Death of Mounir Hammouche following torture

Alkarama for Human Rights urges the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions to intervene with the Algerian authorities to ensure that the autopsy report is provided to the family of the deceased.
By way of background, on 18 January 2007, Alkarama for Human Rights wrote to the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, Special Rapporteur on Torture, and Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and of Fundamental Liberties in the Antiterrorist Struggle to present the case of Mounir Hammouche, who died as a result of undergoing torture.
Mounir Hammouche, born 15 December 1980 and living in Ain Taghrout (wilaya of Bordj Bou Arreridj), was arrested at 8 pm on Thursday 20 December 2006 as he left the town mosque. He was taken away by armed men in civilian clothes driving a grey Peugeot 406 with an Algiers license plate, and driven to a Department of Information and Security (DRS) barracks.
According to the family, the agents blamed him for “not praying in the closest mosque to his house” and “growing a beard and wearing Islamic dress”. He was freed on the next day, 21 December, and it is not known whether he was tortured during this first arrest.
Two days later, on 23 December 2006, he was kidnapped again by the same people driving the same vehicle, again as he left the mosque following the final evening prayer.  Six other people were arrested in the same circumstances.  They were all driven to the DRS barracks at Constantine, where they were mistreated and tortured.
On the evening of 29 December, Mounir Hammouche’s relatives were informed that he had died in police custody.  The security services claimed that he “had probably killed himself” and that “an autopsy had in any case been carried out.”  They authorised them to pick up the body that evening.
The family then noticed that the victim bore many signs of torture, including a wound to the head and bruises to the hands and feet.  The family buried the deceased on the next day, 30 December 2006, in the presence of the security authorities and under police surveillance.  The family is convinced that Mounir Hammouche died as a result of the tortures he underwent while in police custody at the DRS barracks in Constantine.
It is this service, whose members also qualify as judicial police officers, which brought the other people arrested before the public prosecutor of the Bordj Bou Arreridj court, who opened a judicial proceeding for “apology for terrorism” under article 87.4 of the Algerian Penal Code.  This article decrees that “whoever defends, encourages, or finances the acts described in this section, by any means whatsoever, shall be punished by a penalty of five (5) to ten (10) years’ imprisonment and a fine of 100000 DA to 500000 DA.”
This charge, along with the charge of “belonging to a terrorist organisation”, is currently invoked by the Algerian security services to justify arrests and arbitrary detentions as well as prolonged police custody.
The DRS, the former “Military Security”, is in the hands of the Minister of National Defense, a post held by the President of the Republic personally.  This department is particularly well-known for having committed thousands of cases of forced disappearance and extrajudicial executions, as well as for its systematic practice of torture.
Alkarama for Human Rights considers this death, probably resulting from torture, to justify intervention by the UN Special Rapporteurs so that they can intervene with the Algerian authorities.  Recall that the Algerian state has been party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention on Torture since 1989.

Alkarama for Human Rights, 29 May 2007